motherscratcher wrote:I don't know about Grant being caught by surprise. It feels like they were on Waiters all along, which is concerning because in that case how do you not trade down?

Because to trade down, it takes someone else to agree to trade up, and with MKG and Beal gone, I'm not seeing who teams were excited to trade up for. I'm not ecstatic with the pick, but I do think that we needed to take a shot at a higher upside guy. If Waiters is highest on Grant's board and no one was willing to give us anything to let us move down, then I guess you just take Waiters and wait for all the armchair-GMs who have no idea what offers were actually on the table to finally stop bitching.

motherscratcher wrote:I don't know about Grant being caught by surprise. It feels like they were on Waiters all along, which is concerning because in that case how do you not trade down?

Because to trade down, it takes someone else to agree to trade up, and with MKG and Beal gone, I'm not seeing who teams were excited to trade up for. I'm not ecstatic with the pick, but I do think that we needed to take a shot at a higher upside guy. If Waiters is highest on Grant's board and no one was willing to give us anything to let us move down, then I guess you just take Waiters and wait for all the armchair-GMs who have no idea what offers were actually on the table to finally stop bitching.

7foot3 wrote:Because to trade down, it takes someone else to agree to trade up, and with MKG and Beal gone, I'm not seeing who teams were excited to trade up for. I'm not ecstatic with the pick, but I do think that we needed to take a shot at a higher upside guy. If Waiters is highest on Grant's board and no one was willing to give us anything to let us move down, then I guess you just take Waiters and wait for all the armchair-GMs who have no idea what offers were actually on the table to finally stop bitching.

Yeah, I've had time to climb off that ledge. Lots of warning signs still around Waiters but I don't feel nearly as sucktastic as I did last night. Or as I do about Thompson.

"The fucking Who...... If I want to watch old people run around ill go set fire to a nursing home." - CDT

1) How often does a team have a top five draft pick in (or ask them to be in) for their first workout the gawdamn day before the draft? I mean this something that typically happens maybe once every few years at most. The Cavs have now done this two years in a row. Two years in a row their pick has been leaked to certain media members because of this ridiculous fact the day of the draft

2) In June Waiters decided to not workout for anyone because he had a promise to go #19. If the Cavs had been obsessively following Waiters and Boheim around (as claimed in the PD) either Boeheim fucked his kid over by not advising strongly against sitting out workouts because top five teams were interested in him or the Cavs put in as much due-diligence on Waiters as everyone else.

3) The Cavs also called in Ross to workout the day before the draft, over a week after their last workout (of, you know, the real prospects). That show clear indicision leading up to literally draft day.

Also, Yahoo, I follow this shit obsessively and Waiters never had a top ten guarantee. His guarantee was from Phoenix (for fucks sake this was widely reported, by everyone everywhere for weeks). After the guarantee and without working out he somehow magically started climbing draft boards in a manner that is pretty much completely ridiculous. This is why Givony was going nuts yesterday about him getting all the way into the top five when literally the only thing to happen since his season ended was a guarantee to go #19.

Last edited by e0y2e3 on Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

YahooFanChicago wrote:I don't like the way the draft played out at all and think that Grant was left flat footed when both Beal and MKG were gone. I really think our FO thought one of them would still be there at 4 and the draft went haywire on them when Charlotte took MKG instead of Robinson. I think Beal was their option 1, MKG was plan b and maybe there was no plan C.?

That said, Waiters was going number 7 to Golden State if he didn't go at 4 to the Cavs. That has been widely reported now and the speculation is that Golden State was the "top 10 guarantee" team. So even though I don't like the way the draft went let's not pretent the guy was a marginal top 20 pick.

I would have gone with Robinson if I were the Cavs at 4 but it seems that Waiters was not the huge stretch some are making him out to be or as big of a stretch at TT.

Also, the Warriors were shopping their pick obsessively yesterday, which really speaks highly against them making any guarantees.

All you've had to do to know who the Cavaliers would take at 4 the past two years is to read Hollinger's BS math geekery article 10 days before the draft.

Dion Waiters = highest rated wing! He was a 14.12! Beal & MKG were only 11.65 & 13.58 respectively! What a steal! Dion Waiters was #4 overall on his board.

Same BS with TT last year.

ETA: Last year's article was easier to find that I thought it would be. Tristan Thompson = highest rated big! He was a 16.21! Derrick Williams was only a 15.97! What a steal! (Also, he had TT at #3 overall on his board, one spot ahead of Jonas.)

Last edited by HoodooMan on Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:16 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Also, I love how getting Zeller to move Andy back to PF all of the sudden has become the plan going into the draft when Andy was being shopped to everyone in the lottery last night according to again, every level of the media from Jason Lloyd to fucking Chad Ford.

You guys really stand as the perfect example of what a bunch of morons can accomplish when they draw opinions without actual facts to back them up.

Also in this very informative Windhorst piece is the fact that Zeller wasn't "the man" and that the Cavs had a group of guys in the teens they had interest in (this, of course, in addition to the Cavs declaring they were taking a wing before the draft no matter what to protect TT).

And yes, DooDoo is right. Grant is drafting extensively on his advanced stats.

e0y2e3 wrote:Ah, yeah, so instead Gilbert is the guy that goes into the off-season planning to not workout his guy until the very last second (if at all), because that is a pretty damn sound scouting technique.

I mean, in the history of the NBA draft pretty much no GM has been stupid enough to try that tactic, but our guy is a trailblazer!

You keep bringing this up as if it invalidates everything else. Waiters wasn't going to workout for anyone. Why would he have to? All he had to do was wait for Barnes and Drummond to crater and suddenly he and the Big Sky MVP are top 6 picks.

That is a load of horseshit. Players that sit out the entire off-season after being rated in the teens by pretty much everyone don't ever magically fly up to being top five picks without working out. Again, what the Cavs are doing with these workouts and this last day approach is exctremely stupid and literally unheard of previously. I mean, I'm really glad Byron Scott loves the pick with all of that playing off the bench film he had to watch LULZ.

Unless you have a GM (as DooDoo first pointed out and Windhorst confirms) that is drafting off of some silly advanced stat system.

Well, everyone should feel good about Gilbert hiring a guy because he didn't require final control over basketball ops and because he was running a draft system that relied extensively on advanced stats and had produced roughly two quality NBA players in 8 years (and that number if largely dependant on how you feel about Josh Smith, a total of one could be argued).

Especially in situations where you can evaluate Tristan Thompson working running around the court by himself and jumping high or you don't even bother to workout the other guy because your assistant GM saw three practices and a couple of games (exact total per Windhorst).

Fuckups like this and the Tristan Thompson disaster from last year are what happen when you only pay attention to numbers instead of doing actual scouting. Coulda and shoulda had Vala and Robinson to go along with Irving. Instead, fucking Grant delivers us a guy who might one day develop into a decent 6th man, and a taller DaJuan Wagner. Fucking fantastic.

Eo, you watch this shit a lot more than I do that is a fact...however, there are a lot of other people out there that get paid to watch this shit and have professional networks with the GM's and agents and they disagree with you.

They were talking about GS being caught off guard with the Cavs taking Waiters on Mike and Mike this morning since that is who they were going to draft and Wadle and Silvy on ESPN radio in Chicago were saying the same thing earlier today. (insert comments about ESPN being crap here). There were mocks with GS taking him as well (insert comments about mocks being useless here).

My only point is the guy wasn't a marginal top 20 selection. He's not who I would have taken but those saying he was marginally top 20 are probably not right.

StewieG wrote:Fuckups like this and the Tristan Thompson disaster from last year are what happen when you only pay attention to numbers instead of doing actual scouting. Coulda and shoulda had Vala and Robinson to go along with Irving.

e0y2e3 wrote:Well, everyone should feel good about Gilbert hiring a guy because he didn't require final control over basketball ops and because he was running a draft system that relied extensively on advanced stats and had produced roughly two quality NBA players in 8 years (and that number if largely dependant on how you feel about Josh Smith, a total of one could be argued).

Especially in situations where you can evaluate Tristan Thompson working running around the court by himself and jumping high or you don't even bother to workout the other guy because your assistant GM saw three practices and a couple of games (exact total per Windhorst).

Dude, that's the point. Not about you being right or werong.

Again, I'd feel better if Dunphy HAD pannicced.

He carefully set up a system that deliberately and thoroughly orchestrated and prepared for draft day and he and that system MEANT to give us TT and Waiters with B2B 4th overalls.

MoScratch, you don't think Grant and Co were caught unprepared and flat footed??? Here is why I disagree, the reports I heard (on here and elsewhere) are that the Cavs had never even talked to Waiters before they drafted him. He hadn't worked-out for them either. Doesn't that seem a bit strange to you if they were really planning on making that selection?

Of course they are saying now that they did all of this due diligence on him but if they had wouldn't they have at least met the guy?

YahooFanChicago wrote:MoScratch, you don't think Grant and Co were caught unprepared and flat footed??? Here is why I disagree, the reports I heard (on here and elsewhere) are that the Cavs had never even talked to Waiters before they drafted him. He hadn't worked-out for them either. Doesn't that seem a bit strange to you if they were really planning on making that selection?

Of course they are saying now that they did all of this due diligence on him but if they had wouldn't they have at least met the guy?

Don't jump up and down about this being a MSB piece. These are quotes:

"We did an enormous amount of research, maybe more than we've ever done, with Dion," Grant said. "Ultimately, we had to make a decision what was best for us and best for this organization. With all the information, we felt very comfortable.

pup wrote:So you want me to believe at no point, with all the hours devoted to drafting and scouting, nobody even mentioned "what would we do if Beal and MKG are gone?". Not once?

It's not that I think they didn't see it coming, but rather that Grant didn't think it would happen. Of course he thought of it, but didn't think it was as likely to happen as another scenario. I'm sure he had a plan made up if it did happen that went something like this: Davis, MKG and Beal are gone. Trade down a couple spots and take Waiters. I definitely think they were desperate to trade down as evidenced by the fact that they used 4:30 to get their pick in. Nobody was interested in a trade.

YahooFanChicago wrote:MoScratch, you don't think Grant and Co were caught unprepared and flat footed??? Here is why I disagree, the reports I heard (on here and elsewhere) are that the Cavs had never even talked to Waiters before they drafted him. He hadn't worked-out for them either. Doesn't that seem a bit strange to you if they were really planning on making that selection?

Of course they are saying now that they did all of this due diligence on him but if they had wouldn't they have at least met the guy?

JB, i know the Cavs FO is saying that they did a shitbox full of due diligence on Waiters. Of course they are going to say that and I am sure they had their people look at him and that they have a ton of film on him like they do for all of the other guys.

It just doesn't seem to add up..they never met the guy and they didn't work him out (due to the other team guarantee). Aren't those 2 things some pretty basic and essential pieces of due diligence???

YahooFanChicago wrote:MoScratch, you don't think Grant and Co were caught unprepared and flat footed??? Here is why I disagree, the reports I heard (on here and elsewhere) are that the Cavs had never even talked to Waiters before they drafted him. He hadn't worked-out for them either. Doesn't that seem a bit strange to you if they were really planning on making that selection?

Of course they are saying now that they did all of this due diligence on him but if they had wouldn't they have at least met the guy?

So, what you're saying is that the Cavs draft board was this:

1. Davis2. Beal3. MKG4. Nobody. Not worth even considering.

Way to not answer the question. nice.

Of course none of us on here know what their plan and board was but I would guess that plan C was trade down and they didn't think it would come to that.

I can't believe they planned and intended to draft a player they had never ever met or talked to before or worked out. If that was their plan they suck at their job.

Meanwhile, Grant scrolled through the Internet, catching up on everything else that had happened.

That article does not comfort me one iota. He admits he was zoned in on a wing player regardless of overall talent at 4 and that they were seriously considering him along with MKG and Beal - which is terrifying when you look at their body of work compared with his.

I also don't buy it all. Why if they had MKG and Waiters basically equal then why bother trying to trade up to 2 at all? Why even bother talking with the Bobcats? Either you were doing it because you had MKG rated a lot higher than Waiters or you have Beal rated that much higher. Otherwise you're just selling BS.

Also Windy on the C-Town beat for ESPN makes me wonder if he is heading back to C-Town media scene.

12-13: Another bad year. TT shows he still hasn't developed any skills. Waiters can score, and comes up with a high number of steals, but that's mostly because he spends so much time cheating off his man. He gives up a ton of easy looks. Varajao (who they still haven't traded) does Andy things for 3 months. Just as trade talks for him start to heat up, he gets injured again, and comes back in late March. Zeller does OK off the bench, averaging 6 and 4 in about 20 minutes a night. Cavs end up with the 5th worst record, but get lucky in the lottery and get the #3 overall pick. On draft day, they pass on a very good SG prospect to take a SF who has "great advanced stat numbers" about 8 picks too early. Stewie has to be restrained from driving up to Independence and strangling Chris Grant. In round 2, they take some foreign player who will likely never play here. Byron Scott is fired by Grant, attempting to save his job.

13-14: The Cavs once again disappoint. TT improves his shooting numbers to 45% from the floor and 55% from the line. Waiters averages 16 points on 20 shots a night, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 1.5 steals and 3.5 TO's. Cavs finish with 6th worst record, and pick 6th. They finally don't reach, because there's nobody worth reaching for. They take a "meh" prospect who projects as a decent 7th or 8th man. They celebrate Kyrie's impending free agency by overpaying for a couple of players who are, at best, decent.